Historical events often carry an air of uncertainty, like a fog that veils their boundaries. Questions arise about when the historical process leading to a coup d’état, or in the case examined in this book, an attempted coup, truly begins. How is it orchestrated? What delineates its scope? Who are the involved actors, and what fields of study and knowledge are essential for comprehending it?

This book delves into the attempted coup that transpired on January 8, 2023, in Brasilia, Brazil, following the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro and the inauguration of his successor, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. On that day, thousands of extremist Bolsonaro supporters invaded, sacked, and vandalized federal government buildings in Brasília with the aim of inciting a military coup against the Lula da Silva government and reinstating Jair Bolsonaro as the president of Brazil.

The essays and artistic interventions in this collection aim to unravel the various dimensions of this pivotal event. They discuss the origins, occurrence, and aftermath of anti-democratic Bolsonarist mobilizations, with a specific focus on the communicative and symbolic aspects of this historical occurrence.

From examining historical aspects to exploring aesthetic meanings, communication strategies, and the dynamics of a collective unconscious, “The Planalto Riots: Making and Unmaking a Failed Coup in Brazil” provides a critical perspective on the intricate process of how an attempted coup is both constructed and dismantled.

In the first datafied pandemic, the production of interactive Covid-19 data maps was intensified by state institutions and corporate media. Maps have been used by states and citizens to understand the advance and retreat of the contagion and monitor vaccine rates. However, the visualisations being used are often based on non-comparable data types across countries, leading to visual misrepresentations. Many pandemic data visualisations have consequently had a negative impact on public debate, contributing to an infodemic of disinformation that has stigmatised marginalised groups and detracted from social justice objectives. Counter to such hegemonic mapping, counter-data maps, produced by marginalised groups, have revealed hidden inequalities, supporting calls for intersectional health justice. This article investigates the ways in which various intersectional global communities have appropriated data, produced counter-data maps, unveiled hidden social realities, and generated more authentic social meanings through emergent counter-data mapping imaginaries. We use a comparative multi-case study, based on a multi case-study of three Covid-19 data mapping projects, namely Data for Black Lives (US), Indigenous Emergency (Brazil), and CityLab maps (global). Our findings indicate that counter-data mapping imaginaries are deeply embedded in community-oriented notions of spatiality and relationality. Moreover, the cartographic process tends to reflect alternative imaginaries through four key dimensions of data mapping practice—objectives, uses, production, and ownership. We argue that counter-data mapping is the new frontier of digital media activism and community communication, as it extends the projects of data justice and community media activism, generating new practices in the activist repertoire of communicative action.

In this presentation we propose that solidarity networks in urban settings as a communicAction process can be understood politically as forging symmetric relations between communicating subjects through the appropriation of technologies and emergence of social technologies. Urbanization processes throughout the 20th century led to fragmentation of communities – dissociation between living and work, zoning of cities (live, work, study, consumption), as well as diminishing public spaces and urban areas where the main focus is not consumption. Coupled with post-industrial urbanization, neoliberalism has gained dominance as a political system with both local and global effects. Lives mediated by consumption and the individual biography as a market endeavor intensify in hyper mediatized urban centers. Furthermore, increasing precarization that reduces the security of contemporary life leading, for many, to precarious existences lacking the stability to plan their lives. These processes happen in a context of space schizophrenia (Santos, 2021) in which places are both singular and global, while citizenship is practically exercised to a great extent at the local level because global actors are anti-citizen. Fragmentation and breaking of connections are particularly visible in times of crises, however, at these times we can also see the need for these connections and how people act to (re) build these connections. This reconstruction can be understood as a communicative process structured by the constructions of communities as shared existence (Paiva, 2005). With the dismantling of the welfare state and the safety net it provides, individuals are left alone to self organize and solidarity the emerges as a strategy of action with practical and political aims to disrupt isolationism. Local solidarity enacted through communication becomes thus an expression of citizenship. Sociotechnical dispositives for citizen centered urban management – Refugees Welcome Stockholm, Transport a Sister – Help Ukraine, community gardens, community kitchens, compliance activism. In authoritarian regime, certain kinds of urban solidarity regime might be the only option that leaves a fissure for political organization.

For Indigenous populations in Brazil, maps are instruments of (in)visibility. Official maps have erased Indigenous territories and communities while cartographic representations have been a tool of resistance for Indigenous activists. These dynamics intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic when the spread of the virus among indigenous populations was poorly reported and absent from hegemonic contagion maps. Negligence from the state threatened the survival of communities around the country who organized collectively to create their own cartographic representations of the pandemic through resistant appropriations of media and data. 

This paper draws on interviews with Indigenous leaders and media activists to discuss processes of data appropriation and resistant cartographies during the Covid 19 pandemic. Findings highlight the use of data and counter mapping strategies for self-representation and political action that must be understood through a non-media centric perspective, drawing from conceptualizations at the intersection between human geography, communication, and post-colonial theory. 

In the first pandemic of the datafied society, interactive COVID-19 data maps have entered citizen media diets, as governments and media communicate COVID-19 case counts through cartographic data visualizations. These are used by state and citizens alike to understand how contagion advances and retreats, assess mobility patterns, and monitor vaccination numbers. However, they are often based on non-comparable data types across countries, including varied reporting criteria and timeframes, leading to visual misrepresentations. Moreover, many pandemic data visualizations have had a negative impact on public debate and action, contributing to the infodemic of disinformation, stigmatizing marginalized groups, and detracting from social justice objectives. Counter to hegemonic maps, spatial representations developed through grassroots data appropriation have been redrawn by marginalized groups to reveal hidden inequalities and support calls for intersectional health justice. This paper investigates the counter-mapping imaginaries of community activists who use data to unveil realities and shape social meanings, focusing on three counter-mapping case studies–City Lab, Data4BlackLives, and Indigenous Emergency. We find that counter-mapping data imaginaries are deeply embedded in notions of spatiality and relationality across four dimensions of analysis: objectives, uses, production, and ownership. These findings help us to better understand how counter-data maps construct new social realities, through not just the maps themselves but also the processes of creating them, with the potential to support self-determined communities through cartographies of resistance.